Female Pundits on Men's Sports Mod warning in Post #42

15-04-2023 9:02am

If Roy was being a pundit on this thread then he’d describe it as pathetic, nonsense, amateur, and full of man-children

thehairygrape · 15-04-2023 10:00am

snooker it would be Alan McManus

To inject a little humour and stir things up: is snooker a sport? Should it count in this thread? (The sound you hear is me running away…very fast).

CGI_Livia_Soprano · 16-04-2023 9:01am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120478814#Comment_120478814

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120479426#Comment_120479426

You absolutely did say class and education equates to intelligence.

This is what you said:

To be honest the GAA in Dublin has become a mainly middle class game. So the majority are erudite and articulate.

I mean calling Rugby players thick in analysis, surely omits the fact that many Rugby players work in white collar and are privately educated

Those are your words. You said that rugby players and/or GAA “stars” can’t be thick because they are privately educated and they have white collar jobs. It’s disgusting classism, and I have no time for the rest of your auld waffle. Absolute waffle.

16-04-2023 10:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120482623#Comment_120482623

Thought that was a little unfair of Roy if I’m being honest with you, Pat. Not his best work if I’m being honest with you. Roy and his advisors need to understand that a little Roy goes a long way and overexposure will lead to people becoming tired of him.

getoutadodge · 16-04-2023 11:09pm

I see the Sunday Game has gone all female. The mute button and remote control is your friend. Symptomatic of RTE generally though not just mens sports coverage. Current affairs coverage is one endless girly magazine fest...

Fred Astaire · 17-04-2023 10:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466295#Comment_120466295

So why are they getting paid to analyse the sport then, when relatively speaking, they are absolutely horrendous at it?

If we know that the ability/level/capability of the best womens footballers in the entire world is below the level of a couple of basically random teenage boys, that puts them well into the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands in terms of deserving to be on a punditry panel in terms of ability/level. Their insight is as useful to me as some drunken idiot in the pub. Completely irrelevant and uninformed.

So are they bringing something else to the party? Certainly not any chemistry with the male pundits, certainly not any personality, or humour, or an ability to wind others up and get them going. Certainly no relevant expertise from their playing days, as mentioned above. So they get parachuted in as a pure box ticking exercise. If you're the likes of Karen Carney or Stephanie Roche, how could you possibly believe that you actually deserve to be paid to talk about a sport - that if the sport was unisex, would have them playing at Sunday League level?

And don't even get me started on the GAA where the rules are completely different in the male and female equivalent of both sports. Not even the same bloody sport that they are giving opinion on.

Absolutely laughable.

cms88 · 18-04-2023 7:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120489567#Comment_120489567

Stephanie Roche is the one who really get me. She actually wasn't even that great of a player. Got lucky someone was there to film that goal,granted a great one, and has been living off it ever since.

Avon8 · 19-04-2023 11:44am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120453906#Comment_120453906

Very good examples. Both are excellent, in particular Jane Mangan. She can pivot immediately from being an analyst to being a presenter, she's as knowledgeable on the Irish racing landscape as anyone out there and she's also witty.

There have been many good female commentators on both those sports for many years, e.g Lydia Hislop, Maureen Madill etc. I think that's somewhat telling, and it was the case previous to this 'tokenism' age for a reason. In racing you're forecasting races in advance 80% of the time, talking about the various horses attributes etc, and anyone can do that from Ruby Walsh to an informed fan. It helps that Jane's rode in these races when it comes to the retrospective analysis, but its not essential for racing punditry. Golf is solely about either the personalities or the technique, so again its uniform across most involved with the game

Hopefully some will bridge the gap on male field sports but thus far the standard has been woeful in general and the continued inclusion of some has just added to the 'tokenism' claims. Popular male analysists are either insightful (Neville, Peter Canavan), controversial (Spillane, Keane) or occasionally mainly comedic value (Micah Richards) . Female analysis on male field sports have thus far struggled to be insightful due to lack of playing the actual game they are commenting on, while there's understandably been very few of the latter two buckets

Iseedeadpixels · 19-04-2023 12:34pm

I think Alex Scott and Sue Smith are fantastic pundits and their careers have definitely merited them being there.

I would happily see them over Jim Beglin and Ronnie Whelan.

TomTomTim · 19-04-2023 4:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120494881#Comment_120494881

Horse racing is unique though in that female involvement happened more organically than in most sports, where it's now all but forced. So many females involved in horse racing commentary/analysis largely got there purely on merit and not gender quotas.

truthseekerxz · 19-04-2023 4:18pm

Don’t mind a lady talking about sport on the box but please they shouldn’t sing the national anthem before a game. It’s very deflating.

Avon8 · 19-04-2023 5:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120496024#Comment_120496024

That was basically my point yeah, in certain sports you don't need to have been involved at the highest level for great insight, racing being one and Lydia and Jane knowing more than 99% of racing analysts were excelling long before the tokenism of a female panelist became a regular thing.

I think that can be true of any sport to a lesser extent (Ken Early never played and probably has more football listeners in this country than anyone else). But you do need either a forceful personality or some comedic value

hayrabit · 20-04-2023 12:30pm

Laura Turner in darts - pure brutal. comes into a given match with one or two measly stats in her back pocket 😁 and Mardle and the likes can throw em out non stop 😀

kazamo · 20-04-2023 4:36pm

Fiona Coghlan is an excellent rugby pundit and knows her stuff. And then RTE spoil it by adding Jamie Heaslip

LambshankRedemption · 20-04-2023 8:10pm

If you think women are boring or incompetent, you should be watching RTE 2 right now. The commenators are flipping terrible!

cms88 · 22-05-2023 7:48am

While i'm no fan of Donal Og, but will there be mch done about Joanne Cantwells failed ambush yesterday? She's been doing stuff like this for years and it's about time someone pur her in her box. She's always trying to be controversial, cut across people etc Brolly, again no great fan, was gotten rid of for going off script etc yet time and time said Cantwell does and it's accepted.